Happy Monday everyone! I hope my friends in the US survived the long holiday weekend filled with food, family, shopping and fun., Today I am pleased to host a guest post by Rev. Mona Chicks. Mona is an ordained American Baptist pastor (retired), who supervises the home-based learning of her profoundly gifted and twice-exceptional son. She enjoys reading, writing, movies, sports (playing and watching), and is a big fan of the Seattle Sounders FC (soccer) and Linfield College Wildcats (football). Mona writes about raising a PG/2e child on her blog, Life With Intensity. Mona and her family live in the state of Washington.
Today, Mona is talking about the art of gratitude. Take it away, Mona:
There seems to be this common thread that is sewing together the scraps of reading that I’ve been doing lately. It is a thread that frequently gets lost in the fabric of life. My fabric is highly colored and patterned, with darks and lights playing against each other in a yin and yang that dances through the pinks, greens, reds, and blues. Some parts of my fabric are highly textured, and some are smooth. But this thread weaves its way throughout, quietly bringing the themes of my fabric together to a unified wholeness.
The thread is thankfulness.
It’s easy to be thankful when you are experiencing the bright pinks and reds and yellows of life. When your fabric is smooth and silky, it is easy to recognize the blessings that have created a beautiful pattern in its weave.
But when the world is dark blues, purples, or even black – it is often hard to distinguish the pattern, to see how the colors gently weave in and out of one another to paint a picture. When the fabric seems rough to the touch, or scratchy, finding that thread becomes vital. How frequently we lose that thread in our fabric because we close down our ability to see it. It’s so easy to stare at the blackness with eyes that are unfocused. We don’t see the pattern, the subtle changes in shade or depth, or feel how the scratchy surface covers an ultra-soft down underneath. We blindly sit with our fabric tossed to the side, hoping that by ignoring the pain, it will go away.
When I can begin to look closely at those dark areas of my fabric is when I can begin to see the beauty in the pattern, and I can find that thread of thankfulness. I might enjoy the brightly-patterned portions of my fabric more, but the subtlety and depth that comes alive in the darkness engages me in a new pattern altogether.
I look for that thread and sense that, if I were to pull it out, the whole fabric would lose its integrity. And so I begin a process of studying my patterns. I look for opportunities to be thankful, even when my heart is sad. And in my receiving and responding, I find that I can see the pattern in my fabric as it becomes richer and grows in beauty.
Thank you Mona – I loved that. Mona offers more of her beautiful wisdom in my upcoming book, The Girl Guide.
Intense Life Coaching 